Enlightenment, education, and freedom from religion

[question everything]

Enlightenment, education, and freedom from religion

Daat Emet http://www.daatemet.org.il/index.cfm

DE has been operating since 1998 as a public organization, whose main goal is the study of classical Jewish culture and the dissemination of its scientific, humanistic interpretation. In order to achieve this goal, DE has carried out a series of educational and cultural projects aimed at developing a dependable, historically grounded interpretation of the Jewish religion legacy, and its promulgation in the Israeli society.

DE has reached the conclusion that the amazingly rich classical Jewish legacy, which makes up the main body of Jewish culture, has been deliberately misinterpreted for a long period of time; as a result, it has become a political tool in the hands of self-interested fundamentalists who lay claim to having exclusive ownership of this legacy. Over the last several decades, the state of Jewish culture has been steadily deteriorating. Today, in fact, there is a mere handful of academic researchers resisting the onslaught of those who openly exploit the Jewish legacy for their own political and social agenda. Not only is the voice of these scholars virtually unheard; the fundamentalist interpretations have started to permeate academia itself.

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